Playoff system could end SEC’s dominance

Bucking the trend?

Published: Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013 12:32 a.m. CDT

Caption

(AP)

Alabama running back Eddie Lacy will be key contributor in Monday's BCS Championship game against Notre Dame. Alabama is looking for its third title in 4 years, and to extend the SEC's run to seven straight champions.

BY PAUL NEWBERRY
Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Roy Kramer remembers all the fretting when the Southeastern Conference launched its own championship game two decades ago.

"Especially from the coaches," the former SEC commissioner said Friday, chuckling a bit at those long-ago discussions. "They were convinced that would be the end of everything, and we would never win another national championship."

It sure didn't work out that way, of course.

The SEC has ruled like no other conference.

Just around the corner is another momentous change to shake up the college football landscape, spurred in part by the dominance down South. Undoubtedly, there are plenty of folks in the rest of the country hoping the four-team national playoff, which starts in 2014, will make it tougher for the SEC to pile up trophies.

Kramer, for one, doesn't expect much of an impact, just as splitting into East and West brackets and tacking on an extra game between the division champs back in 1992 has done little to damage the SEC's national title prospects.

"The SEC could very well end up with three of the four playoff teams in any given year," Kramer told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his retirement home near Chattanooga, Tenn. "I don't know that a playoff will significantly reduce the possibility of winning a national title. Some may believe that, but I'm not convinced it reduces the chances at all."

This much is clear: The current system is owned by the SEC.

The conference is riding an unprecedented streak of six straight national titles, and No. 2 Alabama is favored to make it seven in a row Monday night when the Crimson Tide takes on top-ranked Notre Dame in the next-to-last BCS championship game.

For better or worse, just about every major conference has followed the SEC's lead from way back in 1992 – adding new teams, starting their own title games – but the juggernaut that began it all appears more firmly entrenched than ever.

Over the last 20 seasons, the league has won nine national titles; no other conference has claimed more than four during that span. And the SEC has pitched a shutout since the 2006 season, divvying up six titles among four schools (Florida, Alabama, LSU and Auburn) while the rest of the country looked on enviously, wondering just what it had to do to break the stranglehold.

Last season, when the BCS produced an all-SEC matchup in the title game, the rest of the country screamed uncle.

Or, more accurately, playoff.

Suddenly, everyone jumped on board for what amounts to a true postseason system, albeit with not as many teams as the biggest supporters of the P-word would like.

Kramer has no doubt that Alabama's 21-0 victory over LSU in the 2012 title game accelerated the demands for a playoff among the other conferences – even though current SEC commissioner Mike Slive had proposed what is largely the same four-team format several years ago, only to be quickly shot down.

"I don't think there's any question that the added interest in trying to expand the field to some degree, to go from two to four teams, was influenced by what happened a year ago when two teams from the same conference played in the championship game," Kramer said. "That brought a significant amount of attention to it and perhaps brought on a willingness by more people to take a look at this process."

If the four-team playoff had been in place this season – and using the BCS standings as a selection guide – the SEC would have claimed half the field anyway. Florida finished third in the rankings, while No. 4 Oregon presumably would have been the other team, surely creating plenty of howls from teams such as Kansas State and Stanford (sound familiar?).

But the playoff is still a couple of years away. Heck, the powers-that-be are still trying to hammer out all the details. In the meantime, Notre Dame has set its sights on ending the SEC's dominance this season without the assistance of an extra round, having built a team around defense and a good running game – kind of like a northern version of Alabama.

Despite a perfect record (12-0) and No. 1 ranking, the Fighting Irish know what they're up against. So do the oddsmakers, who started Alabama as a 7˝-point favorite and pushed it up to 9˝ when the bets flowed in on the Crimson Tide.